There is a big problem in NCAA D-III athletics. It’s not that there are booster programs run amok, or cheating scandals, or that athletes are being paid to play college sports. Rather, the problem is that D-III itself may be too big.
Huh?
To explain we first need a little history lesson.
It isn’t exactly common knowledge that NCAA D-III doesn’t date back to the origins of the NCAA itself. Up until 1973 there really wasn’t any classification of schools in the NCAA—they were either big (or “University”) or small (“College”). Schools like SJU were also members of the NAIA—as most Johnnies are aware given our NAIA football titles in 1963 and 1965.
However, at the 1973 convention, the NCAA divided itself into three classifications: D-I, or major scholarship; D-II, or limited scholarship; and D-III, or nonscholarship. These divisions have survived to date with very minor changes since, such as the creation of DI-A and DI-AA. The founding principle of this structure is that every school has an option as to which division it will compete in by how it structures its athletic program.
To be sure, the NCAA itself has seen a great increase in its membership over the past 30 years. Today, NCAA D-III has become its largest division, in part because of former NAIA members joining, at times, as whole conferences. In 1973, NCAA D-III had all of 273 members. Today, it has 422, with another 25 in provisional and transitioning status. In comparison, D-I is the second largest division with 329 members. However, to manage that number, D-I is divided into three subdivisions.
The problem for D-III is that, since 1990, roughly two-thirds of the schools to join NCAA Div. III left the NAIA. There are a few reasons why: the NAIA’s struggling financial situation, the higher annual dues in the NAIA, and the NCAA pays for participation in its championships, while in the NAIA the schools must foot the bill.
This immigration has caused some real dissention among the traditional D-III members, as the rules and requirements for athletic departments in the NAIA were different than those in the NCAA. For example, the NAIA traditionally allowed redshirting and had lenient spring practice rules, and in one of its subdivisions even, scholarships. With the great influx of members from the NAIA desiring to play under those same rules, there were unfamiliar stresses on the NCAA D-III.
As a result, after a long period of study by a special Reform Committee, in 2003 the NCAA D-III adopted a reform package meant to “purify” the D-III product. This package eliminated the practice of routine redshirts; limited sports playing seasons; and instituted a financial aid review package to ensure there was no-athletic aid being given by member schools.
But all was still not right in D-III. The reform package did not purify the division; rather, it identified dividing lines among the division regarding the role and emphasis upon athletics among D-III members. There has been heated debate since regarding the re-instituting of routine redshirting, and the limitation of recruiting and spring practice for football.
So what does this mean?
The D-III membership requested a committee examine what could be done to deal with the growing diversity of the NCAA membership. It has presented several proposals, including dividing the division based upon size of the school; or upon public/private distinctions; or upon tuition prices. It has finally settled on a proposal that would make the distinction upon number of sports sponsored and degree of rules restriction on athletics programs.
To simplify, let me put it as follows:
Current D-III: Nonscholarship.
Future D-III: Nonscholarship, schools sponsoring fewer sports and favoring less restriction on athletics, such as redshirting and recruiting.
Future D-IV: Nonscholarship, schools that sponsor more sports and favoring shorter seasons, no redshirting, and tighter controls on practices and recruiting.
There are other ideas floated about as well, as perhaps the less athletics emphasis in the future D-IV would mean more limited playoff access, and perhaps only regional championships (instead of national championships).
Why this manner of a split?
First off, though it may not make sense to have UW-Whitewater (enrollment 10,700) having to play regional games against nearby Beloit College (enrollment 1,200), dividing the NCAA up into “big enrollment” and “small enrollment” would effectively limit one of the foundational principles of the NCAA—allowing every school to choose in which division it wishes to participate. Ditto for a split on public/private grounds. Thus, those models were put aside very quickly because of how they offended that notion.
So they were left with an identification of some other means of differentiation. What they came up is what the data indicates as the major philosophical line between the old-guard D-III and the newcomer NAIA schools.
Traditional NCAA D-III schools tend to sponsor more sports than their newcomer NAIA counterparts. While this is not a hard and fast rule, and may be a function of something besides length of NCAA membership, the trend is that the NAIA immigrants tend to have smaller athletic departments. On a local scale, compare Crown College’s 12 sponsored sports to St. Thomas’ 20.
But it doesn’t end there. An analysis of the voting patterns from the D-III reform package a few years ago yields a sharp distinction regarding schools in favor of greater controls on athletic programs and those who were advocating for less NCAA restrictions. This distinction again tended to split down the lines of newcomer NAIA versus old-line D-III. Conferences like the MIAC voted nearly unanimously in favor of the increased restrictions on athletics—fewer off-season practices, no redshirting—while schools that had until recently been in the NAIA voted against those restrictions.
That is not to say that hasn’t produced some apparent anomalies. The WIAC and IIAC appear to have voted very similarly in that reform package with the MIAC and MWC schools. Thus, it is likely that the same big/small issues could still occur. Furthermore, the NWC, with schools such as Linfield, Whitworth and Pacific Lutheran, tended to vote with the other newcomer NAIA conferences requesting redshirts and more off-season practices.
Why can’t we all just get along?
Athletics are currently playing a very big role in the recruitment of students and courting of alumni dollars. This competition is bound to get even more intense as the demographic data indicates a downward trend in the number of college bound males: number one, there are fewer males overall, and number two, the fewer males are proportionally not going to college in the same ratio as they used to. This is a problem for colleges, since males tend to be very supportive of their alma mater, and do so (in general) by donating in higher numbers than their female counterparts.
With fewer males available, the competition for their matriculation is heating up. One need only at the numbers of schools that have football teams versus the schools with football teams. The 2006 revenue of St. Olaf and Carleton was $162.2 and $171.9 million, respectively, while even Augsburg, the worst MIAC performer with a football team, earned $76.5 million. By contrast, the college of St. Scholastica and St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, two schools without football teams, earned $69.5 and $57.5 million, respectively, in 2006. And the rate of growth from the previous year, while still positive for all of the above schools, wasn’t likely to make St. Scholastica or St. Mary’s close the gap any time soon. Which is one of the reasons why St. Scholastica has started the process to begin playing football in 2009.
But some of this comes down to athletics—many schools have used athletics as a way of getting students to enroll at their college, as athletics success has meant an increase in enrollment—is it a coincidence that SJU alone has seen record enrollments in the last decade while winning 7 of the past 9 Durenberger MIAC All-Sports Championships?
But what some schools are concerned about—which often tend to be the historical D-III schools—is an overemphasis upon athletics. Do we really want fewer restrictions on coaches recruiting? Do we want students to be able to obtain routine redshirts? While this may improve the team, does it affect the scholastic side of the school?
So where does that leave us?
The operative term here is “us.” The StarTribune’s Jay Weiner speculated that a D-IV could cause the breakup of the MIAC, as it is unclear where its members would go if faced with only the possibility of winning regional championships.
However, more pertinent is the rules under which the MIAC operates—the MIAC has traditionally been one of the more academic-minded conferences in D-III. The MIAC has not allowed scholarships for athletic purposes before the Reform movement outlawed it; the MIAC currently limits its members’ spring practices and recruiting contact, and most MIAC members are among the leaders in numbers of sports sponsored in D-III. In this sense, it would seem that the MIAC would be a lock for the D-IV. By contrast, schools like Northwestern (Roseville) and Crown College would appear to remain D-III, as they sponsor fewer sports.
But such a move is not inevitable. A few months ago, the MIAC commissioner Dan McKane sent a letter to the NCAA D-III membership asking that they proceed with caution, and suggesting that the MIAC wouldn’t necessarily follow suit with the D-IV movement. And of course, there is always the possibility that some MIAC members would prefer to have fewer restrictions on its athletic department.
Ok, so now what?
The hard part is that nothing is certain yet. There are a lot of things up in the air, starting with the current standards for the new division—which, if those aren’t set, there is no clear way of telling what will happen regarding this. Not to mention that nothing will happen until the 2009 NCAA convention a year from now at the earliest, and there still is the matter of discerning who would pay for the new division anyway.
But what appears to be clear is that D-III is getting too big, and something will happen in the next few years to deal with this size. What exactly it will be is anybody’s guess, but be expecting big changes soon.
